


Fear

by BringtheKaos



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crusades-era, Graphic descriptions of injury, M/M, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Whump, Period Typical Attitudes, Pre-Canon, Whump, Whumptober, You know.... the usual Old Guard faire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26861542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BringtheKaos/pseuds/BringtheKaos
Summary: Just a quick Nicky whump that wouldn't leave my brain alone. Naturally, as a Crusades-era fic, they both have some biases, and I tried to do my research, but do let me know if I portrayed anything incorrectly/insensitively.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 17
Kudos: 235





	Fear

Yusuf would be the first to admit that he’d intended for this to happen. Maybe not this specifically—the pale invader galloping away from him, a mangled, gruesome mess protruding from where his right arm used to be—but...

They’d stopped killing each other a day previous, but they certainly hadn’t stopped hating each other. Yusuf had simply embraced the futility of continuing to cut down that which refused to stay down, and convinced his nemesis of the same. How he managed to do this, with only minimal Ligurian on Yusuf’s part and practically zero Arabic on the invader’s part, was beyond him. But throwing down his scimitar in a fit of rage and frustration had apparently gotten at least some of the message across.

They had both wordlessly come to the agreement that their appearance, blood-caked and shredded, combined with the fact that numerous surviving warriors on both sides had seen them die, warranted new clothing and a place to lie low. Yusuf was intimately familiar with how brutal and vicious men became when frightened by something they neither understood nor wished to.

The two had skirted the battlefield, stumbling over bodies that were clearly never getting back up, and trekked far, far away. They’d walked together, mainly in silence, all night and most of the following day. On the occasions when they did attempt to speak to one another, it was to grunt their names at one another, mostly for the purpose of cursing them. At some point, the invader (Nicolò, he had huffed) had located a spooked and petrified warhorse, her mount dragging lifelessly from a single stirrup and disrupting her gait. Nicolò had spent the better part of the arid and charring afternoon attempting to coax the mare to him—crouched low so as to be unintimidating, holding a hand out, and clicking to her rhythmically. Yusuf had found it a colossal waste of time and energy on a day as hot as this, but he’d appreciated the opportunity to stop, cover himself, and drink from his quickly dwindling reserves of water.

So, mount-less mare in tow, they approached a village to the east of Jerusalem, intending to barter for food, water, and fresh, bloodless clothing.

But Nicolò had initially refused to enter the village, repeating an ugly Ligurian word that Yusuf did not understand and shoving the reins of the horse into his hand.

It was at that point Yusuf understood—the Frank was refusing to enter the village, and expected Yusuf to retrieve his items for him. Rage had flooded him—as if he was subservient, unequal; this invader’s servant—and he’d shoved Nicolò ahead.

Yusuf had known it was a bad idea, on some level, to enter a village so close to the carnage of Jerusalem, with a Frank at his side. But he refused to do this man, this _beast_ any favors, not after what he’d seen him do on the battlefield.

It had gone exactly as badly as it could have gone—Yusuf was unable to barter with anyone, the fearful, doubtful, and furious stares directed at the invader halting any and all progress. And when the men of the village—the only ones that hadn’t taken up the sword to defend the holy city, the old, the sick, the far too young—had risen up in defiance, they were done for.

Of course the people did not attack Yusuf, in fact they hardly paid him any mind. And Yusuf had let it happen. He’d stepped back, watched as they swarmed the young Frank, attacking in very unfair numbers. Yusuf knew it was wrong, in fact he could practically feel the sting of his mother’s long, scolding fingers as they painfully flicked his ear.

_“My Yusuf, I’m disappointed in you,”_ she would say in a deadpan. _“You spilled this milk, you will clean it up.”_

But he was still adrift on his river of fury—the screams of the fallen still ringing in his ears, the cries of overpowered women and children begging to be spared by heartless, merciless men who dared to claim their calling _divine._ No God could possibly want _this,_ could possibly mandate this level of slaughter, this butchering of innocents, this _atrocity._

So Yusuf had watched as the Frank tried desperately to fight them off, raising his longsword to strike the old man who had stabbed him in the gut with an old, rusted dagger. That was when a young man, a boy really, had raised his own scimitar—one not unlike Yusuf’s own—and struck to sever Nicolò’s arm just below the shoulder. The boy’s swing was unpracticed and weak, though, and the blade only embedded in Nicolò’s muscle and bone with a wet _thud._

The Frank’s resulting scream as he fell to the ground, the mob continuing to hack and stab at him as his arm was finally completely severed, shook Yusuf from inaction.

He had stepped forward, pulling a few of the people away and murmuring quietly that they should not stoop to the level of ruthlessness that these Franks did, when Nicolò reached out frantically, yanking the mare’s reins from Yusuf’s hand. The movement spooked her, more than she was already, and her half-rear served to pull Nicolò to his feet, where he swiftly shoved through the crowd and threw a leg up and over the mare, and heeled her away, bowing both Yusuf and another man to the ground in his haste.

Yusuf contemplated going after him—no matter how he hated that man, he was seemingly the only one like him. The only one to fall in battle and rise, fall and rise again. Perhaps he had answers, in that halting, piggish language of his, and Yusuf needed only display a little patience to attain them.

With a defeated sigh, he first gathered the supplies—two of each, as he knew he should, even though it cleaned out his purse—and then set out after the mare’s hoof prints.

It did not take him long to catch up, but only because it appeared Nicolò had become weak and toppled from the horse only a single hill away from the village. The mare was waiting nearby, eyes wide and white, nostrils and flanks flaring with fear. A small gash shown bright red across her chest, and Yusuf tutted.

“I am sorry, girl,” he whispered into the encroaching night. “It was not you I wished to hurt.”

The mare only snorted, backing farther away from the pair of them but not fleeing.

Yusuf turned then to the crumpled form of Nicolò in the sand, and approached.

Nicolò jerked as Yusuf stepped close, attempting to crawl away, his one good arm clawing helplessly through a pool of deep red sand. The Frank’s skin was monstrously pale, and though it was clear his severed arm was healing—muscle and bone and veins alike forming slowly and inching downward into something vaguely arm-shaped—he was clearly having a rough go of it.

This did not, however, stop him from gripping the hilt of his sword and swinging it sloppily in Yusuf’s direction.

This was clearly Nicolò’s non-dominant hand, though, and Yusuf easily dodged it as Nicolò fell onto his back with a soggy, bloody splash. He continued to hold the sword aloft, shaky as it was, his breaths choppy and ragged as he continued to kick his way back and away from Yusuf.

He had determination, Yusuf would give him that.

But if he was determined to be a pain, then Yusuf would let him. So, with a not entirely genuine shrug, Yusuf turned away. He went about retrieving the mare, tending her wound, building a camp fire, and laying out his mat for Maghrib. When he finished, he chanced a look over at the downed Frank once more.

His sword was in the sand, not even in hand anymore, and his arm appeared to have generated down to the elbow. The stain of blood in the sand was significantly larger, and Nicolò was shivering violently, small mewling sounds escaping his lips as he struggled to draw breath past what was clearly intense agony.

Yusuf wondered briefly why he hadn’t passed out from loss of blood by now, but the chilling realization quickly dawned on him that he might not be able to—he was both healing and bleeding out all at once, a concentric circle of injury and regeneration trapping him in a constant state of near-death.

Yusuf shivered at the thought. Surprisingly, in all the times the Frank had managed to fell him in battle, he hadn’t severed any limbs. He was fairly certain his throat had nearly been slit all the way through at some point, but he hadn’t lived through the regeneration to know what it was like. This... this looked... horrifying.

With a surrendering sigh, Yusuf slowly approached, kneeling next to Nicolò. Nicolò whimpered almost inaudibly, weakly attempting to push himself away again.

“No, no,” Yusuf said, one of the few Ligurian words he knew. He accompanied the sentiment by reaching for his scimitar and pulling it from the scabbard. The movement made Nicolò’s eyes go wide and his hand scramble blindly in the sand for his own weapon, but Yusuf made a show of lowering the blade into the sand in a display of, perhaps not surrender, but tentative peace.

Nicolò watched him for only a moment before becoming overcome and collapsing back, an animalistic, tortured sound escaping his lips.

Yusuf took a moment to analyze the wound, another shiver coursing him at the sight.

It seemed to be healing from the inside outward, which left the bones of the elbow joint exposed as muscle began to form and weave around the sinew like a tapestry without a seamstress. It was both mesmerizing and stomach-turning.

Something _popped,_ and Nicolò stiffened, a scream wrenching violently from his lips, another familiar Ligurian word tumbling out along the way— _“mother.”_

It was then that Yusuf felt the first pang of pity. He recalled his infant brother, crying out for their mother after receiving a bite from a non-venomous but no less terrifying snake. He recalled his own cries for the comfort of his mother’s embrace when he’d broken his first bone. He recalled her tears, her clutching hands when he’d risen to the call to defend Jerusalem.

With a sigh, Yusuf slowly reached out for the Frank’s good hand, and took it. Confusion only warred on the man’s face for a moment before he was gripping Yusuf’s hand painfully tight, anchoring to him as he suffered his agonizingly slow healing. And slow it was—the long bone of the forearm forming like creeping frost, and the muscle following thereafter. And all the while, Nicolò continued to bleed into the sand, his skin the color of ruined cotton. Admirably, he did not cry until his hand began forming, at which point he became mindless, writhing in the sand and crying out a litany of foreign words as he clutched Yusuf’s hand so tightly that Yusuf felt a few uncomfortable _pops_.

It took entirely too long—Yusuf lost track of time as he held onto his enemy, watching with slowly mounting guilt as he writhed in pain, choking out more words Yusuf was all too familiar with— _mother, please, God, stop, please._ It was well and truly dark, and Yusuf had only just started to wonder if he’d missed the opportunity for Isha, when Nicolò began to still, his breaths evening out and his body settling into a muted, exhausted shiver. His hand in Yusuf’s, however, did not relent.

Without the Frank’s choked-out sobs and strangled screams filling the air, the night was eerily quiet. No birds were singing, no bugs chirring, no little desert vermin scuttling through the sand—just the labored breaths of two enemies, currently locked in a stalemate.

Yusuf allowed his eyes to rake over the newly formed limb—the sleeve had been taken when it was severed, so Yusuf was able to analyze every inch of fresh but aggravated pink skin. And it seemed perfect—not even a hint of the gory hacking that had removed it in the first place. Not even a scar.

Nicolò jerked, apparently realizing that he was still grasping his enemy’s hand, and he pulled away, attempting to sit upright and only managing to weakly flop back into the sand with a pathetic groan.

Yusuf stood, curiosity forcing him to circle around his prone traveling companion, all the while aware of the Frank’s intense, otherworldly eyes on him as he did. Yusuf knelt once more, reaching out tentatively for Nicolò’s new arm. He expected Nicolò to flinch or pull away, or at the very least curse at him, but he did nothing of the sort, instead blinking languidly, exhaustion written plainly in every taut angle of his features.

Carefully, Yusuf grasped Nicolò by the wrist, raising the limb up to analyze it closer. The skin was baby soft, freshly formed as it was, and quickly blushing from death-pale to a more lively pink. In fact Nicolò’s entire body, from the exposed bits of chest visible through the many tears in his tunic all the way up his neck to his face, was coloring, now that his blood wasn’t freely spilling into the sand.

Yusuf brushed his fingertips from elbow to wrist, noting when small goosebumps appeared at the surface that the skin was completely hairless. With a slightly manic giggle, he wondered if the hair would grow back as quickly as the arm did, or if Nicolò would be left with one arm of a grown man, and one of a newborn babe.

Nicolò looked at him curiously, no doubt stumped by the laughter, but Yusuf did not possess the words in the invader’s tongue to explain what was so funny, so he merely released Nicolò’s arm, pushed to his feet, and offered a hand. Nicolò peered warily at it for an extended moment, before slapping his non-regrown hand into Yusuf’s.

Nicolò whined as he was hoisted to his feet, and he stumbled, gripping Yusuf for purchase as his knees wobbled dangerously and his face went pale again. This, Yusuf was already painfully familiar with—the blood rush and intense fatigue that came with healing from major wounds. So, even though part of him still wanted to shove the Frank away, push him to the ground and see if his head would grow back too... he held him fast and waited for the little nod that signified he could stand on his own.

Yusuf took a single step back, pointing to Nicolò’s new arm, and asked, in broken Ligurian, “pain?”

Nicolò looked at his new hand, raising it to peer down as it trembled in his sight.

“No,” he mumbled, his voice harsh from screaming.

They both fell silent then, as the two of them changed from their torn and bloody clothing, washed crusted blood from their flesh with what little water they could spare, and fetched the poor, terrified mare from the outskirts of their makeshift camp.

They ate in silence, sitting opposite the fire from each other, both avoiding contacting the other’s eyes. Something felt heavy between them now, something that hadn’t been there before the afternoon’s events.

Prayer always settled Yusuf’s mind when it got too chaotic, and after his (probably quite late) Isha, he returned invigorated to the fire to find Nicolò wavering dangerously, clearly fighting to keep his eyes open. His sword was lying by his right side, his fresh hand twitching in the sand next to the hilt—probably fighting off sleep, wary of another betrayal, another ambush.

Yusuf sighed, guilt tinting his mind again. He thought back to the moments before they had entered the village, to the word Nicolò had said as he tried desperately to avoid entering.

“Pah-oora?” Yusuf said, trying to recall how it had been pronounced in the Frank’s frantic hurry. “What does it mean?”

Nicolò looked up at him then, swallowing visibly and fighting with his heavy eyelids. He pondered Yusuf for a long moment, clearly considering how to explain the word when they had very few others between them. Finally, he sighed, leaning to retrieve a small stone at his feet, weighed it in his hand, then, to Yusuf’s complete bafflement, tossed it at the mare’s feet. She spooked, snorting once and prancing frightfully in a half circle before settling once more.

Yusuf was at a loss—it meant horse? Or rock?

“Paura,” Nicolò said, mimicking the mare’s reaction; he jolted, inhaling hard and placing a hand over his heart, and suddenly Yusuf knew.

_Fear._ It meant fear.

Nicolò had been trying to tell him he was afraid to enter the village, afraid to be surrounded by people who knew him as an enemy, and Yusuf was conflicted by this knowledge—his first reaction being ‘ _good! You should be afraid! Feel the fear you have inflicted on my people! You think this is fear?! You know nothing of fear! Until you know what it is to be dragged from your home by pale invaders, attacked and demeaned mercilessly, your family and friends slaughtered before your eyes, you will never know true fear!’_

But his mother’s parting words crept through those shadows in Yusuf’s mind, rising to the surface and echoing there—“ _be brave, my Yusuf. Be brave, be strong, but most of all my love, be kind. Do not let these men, this conflict, shatter that gentle soul of yours that I cherish so deeply. Do not fall victim to the ruthlessness of war. When you come back to me, and I know you will, I want the man who greets me to be the same one I bid farewell to. Be kind, Yusuf. For me. Be kind, always.”_

Yusuf sighed, shame flooding over him like an icy mid-winter chill. He hadn’t been kind. Nicolò had tried to reason with Yusuf, had admitted to something that was difficult for all men to admit—fear—and Yusuf had ignored it, shoved him forward and allowed that fear to come to fruition.

Yusuf nodded sadly, and then stood, circling the fire to stand next to Nicolò as he drew his scimitar from the scabbard once more.

Nicolò tensed, his right hand instinctively grasping the hilt of his longsword, but he did not act. Instead he watched with those sea foam eyes as Yusuf slowly lowered his scimitar to the sand next to Nicolò’s, making a peaceful display of leaving it there as he held his hands aloft and backed away, back to his side of the fire.

“I am sorry,” Yusuf said in Ligurian, holding Nicolò’s intense but very confused gaze. “I am sorry,” he said it again, slower, trying to put as much conviction into the words as possible.

Nicolò’s eyes narrowed suspiciously at him, but his hand on his longsword relaxed, allowing it to fall back into the sand beside Yusuf’s.

“Sleep,” Yusuf said, pointing to his own sword, far out of Yusuf’s reach, and hoping Nicolò took it for the olive branch he’d intended it to be.

Nicolò considered him for longer than was strictly comfortable, before finally heaving out a long, defeated sigh as he shifted and practically collapsed onto his left side. He wrapped himself in his arms, his left hand tracing slowly over the place on his right bicep where it had been severed.

“Grazie,” he mumbled, eyes sliding closed and body going slack as he allowed his exhaustion to finally drag him under.

“Prego,” Yusuf replied, settling in to keep watch all night.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I considered titling this "Give me a Hand," because my brain physically CANNOT take anything seriously.


End file.
